Anger is one of the first emotions humans learn to express. Babies are angry when they get hungry or when their diaper is dirty and they do not hesitate to express it through crying and screaming.
Many of us are more comfortable being angry than the host of other upsetting emotions like sadness or disappointment. Although, as a counselor once described it to me, anger is an iceberg with the usual symptoms visual above the surface and the root causes below the surface.
Grief, sadness, disappointment, doubt, insecurity, instability and all sorts of other feelings can cause and fuel anger and resentment. It takes time and work to identify why you’re really angry and how to resolve the underlying cause. The sooner you put in the time and work, the more quickly you can return some of your personal peace.
Identifying why you’re angry:
- Give yourself the right to be angry, feel it, observe it, think about it
- Move your thoughts to the cause of the anger, why/who/when/how/where/what
- Allow yourself to feel the root cause, be present, it’s okay to feel vulnerable
- Think through how you may have contributed to the root cause or the anger itself
Resolving the anger and the root cause:
- Express the anger in a healthy and perhaps new way
- Write about the anger and everything you thought through to identify it
- Get physical by playing a sport, hiking, walking/running, yard work
- Relax your body through deep breathing, meditation, yoga, quiet time
- Feel the root cause, acknowledge it and understand it may take the most time to work through and move past
- Write down the root cause and how it by itself makes you feel
- Accept what you can control and affect and what you cannot
- Forgive the cause of the anger and forgive yourself for feeling it
- Eventually forgive the root cause and move past it or learn to carry it better
Anger is most often a secondary emotion to something hurtful. Accepting it and thinking through it is a skill to return the personal peace it robs while it goes on unresolved.
Working through emotions is a course we all need a periodic refresher in.